Iowa Highway Ends (etc.)

Part of a series.

An Eagle Scout project is not an individual endeavor. It requires leadership and delegation, coordination and compromise. Making a booklet of directions to area schools was going to take a lot of time — and I happened to have a computer lab of Power Macintosh 5400s at my disposal.

It’s the winter of 1998-99. We’re mailing letters out to schools, asking them to fill out a form with information about administrators, phone numbers, and just exactly how and where people should get to their buildings.

The information returned formed the core of the maps used to this day, with an assist from a pioneering Web service … MapQuest. Type in a location. Get a map centered there. Click to zoom in or out, click to load a new page to move over a “tile”. With that information, move on to the next step: ClarisWorks.

A history of the program from one of its creators can be found here. The program offers modules for word processing, drawing, painting, databases, and spreadsheets. The first two were key to this project. The drawing module was used to draw lines for streets and boxes representing the school, football field, etc. Those maps were then copied and pasted into the word processing module, where information about the school and written directions were kept.

Once the Scouts and parents participating in the project finished their page assignment, the file was double-checked. Then, at a Scout meeting, everyone went through a line, grabbed a printed page, and stapled the booklet together.

I. Save. Everything. (Except the original Traer quasquicentennial webpages. Sigh.)

After the project was done, I retained the files. In subsequent updates, they were converted to AppleWorks 5, then AppleWorks 6. Apple cared about AppleWorks enough that it was the first application to be “Carbonized” — that is, work in both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. The last version was released in 2003. It worked excellently, although I recall that after some map hiccups I decided I’d be better off doing the work on my iBook. Later, an AppleScript enabled me to create a single PDF that could be distributed online.

Then, in mid-2007, Apple unceremoniously wrote the program off. The program’s most important modules were split off into different applications, and not necessarily better ones either. Because of the legacy PowerPC code, Mac OS 10.6.8 is the last version that runs AW. The legacy of individual files, and the by-now awkwardness of the draw module, make re-alphabetizing with new schools a taller task than it otherwise could be. The Draw module, and thus the maps, cannot be duplicated through AW document translators.

In short, I’m working with files created in an application old enough to attend college whose format has been unsupported for six years. My modern map production methods are different, too. If I reverse my decision and continue doing this, I’ll need to seriously consider rebuilding it from the ground up.

This map, working off the 2005-06 Iowa Dept. of Ed. districts map, shows all the public schools covered by the directions booklet in white. Previously included but now removed districts are in gray.

First in a series.

At the end of the 20th century, I led an Eagle Scout project that combined my interest in maps with technology of the time. New football districts were placing North Tama with teams the Redhawks had never played. I thought that making a booklet of directions to dozens of schools, informing parents and fans of exactly how to get to events, would provide a great community service.

In small-school Iowa, not everything is in one place. The high school and junior high can be in different towns, and not all sports may be played at the high school. Gladbrook-Reinbeck, whose high school is in Reinbeck, plays varsity football by the Tama County Fairgrounds in Gladbrook, and continues to do so even after closure of the Gladbrook school. One especially oddball example is that Colo-NESCO plays softball, and only softball, at McCallsburg.

I didn’t necessarily expect that I would continue updating that booklet for the next two decades. I definitely didn’t expect that it would outlast the existence of the Boy Scouts of America.*

But while thinking about the latest version, I have also been considering if it should be the last. In an upcoming series of blog posts, I will explain more about this thought process.

*The future “Scouts BSA” has been sued by the Girl Scouts of America for its decision to admit girls … after being pressured by the National Organization for Women for its position of not admitting girls.

August 10, 2008: Cornerstone of the Albion school, Marshall County.

I couldn’t tell you how many times I passed by the Albion school building on the way to/from Ames or Des Moines and beyond. It was such a fixture that I dawdled a bit on photographing it (but as you can see I got one day).

It was demolished earlier this month. (Story and photos: Marshalltown Times-Republican)

Albion was one of the towns that fought futile fights to keep their school open. But the Marshalltown School District’s vote in March 1981 “was merely the last event in a long process during which the problems of declining enrollments, budgetary constraints and the prospect of closing attendance centers were studied, discussed and debated … .”